Of course there are a few bad eggs but Amazon has the best customer service I've ever dealt with. When my Kindle broke a few years ago someone was on the phone with me and shipping a new one within 10 minutes and it was like 8pm at night.

I've never dealt with Amazon's customer service myself, but as an unappreciated customer service agent who must all too frequently give customers incorrect or unsatisfactory answers because those above me won't listen to reason, I only wish more companies would do this. Let the decision makers deal with the consequences of their decisions by taking customer calls from customers justifiably upset with a decision and find out how a seemingly simple decision is anything but. Instead, show them that treating the customer right is always the right decision. A little cost now can reap tremendous benefits later.

Greg Linden a former Amazon employee who invented the recommendation engine described Amazon’s initial frugality. Linden writes, “the quintessential example of Amazon’s frugality was the door desk. Leave it to Jeff Bezos. Buy a wooden door, preferably a hollow core wooden door with no holes pre-drilled. Saw a couple 4″ x 4″ x 6′ pillars in half. Bolt them to the door with a couple of scary looking angle brackets. Put it in front of a programmer. Door desk.”

Out of the box thinking.

Quote:

Amazon’s unique users are 5x more valuable than eBay’s. Amazon’s average unique user brings in about $189 while eBay’s brings in just $39.

And it has been reported that the average Prime customer rings in $1200 a year.
(There are 10 million-plus of those.)

Amazon's customer service people seem to have a little more latitude to fix a problem than those at other companies I've dealt with--they don't always have to transfer the call to a different department or a supervisor; they can actually DO something.

I think I'm a very rare case in that the two times I've ever needed to contact Amazon's Kindle customer service, I've had an extremely bad time. The first representative accused me of having insufficient funds to purchase an ebook without looking at my account, and the second representative made me perform a factory reset on my Kindle over ten times before he was willing to admit that I was explaining a legitimate problem.

I was chatting with customer service few times and they were so great and helpful that I became a regular Amazon international customer since around 8 years back.
On top of that, when I bought my first Kindle (3, Keyboard, WiFi, international) they charged me custom duty fee in advance (according to their policy). The Kindle came to India really fast, I was impressed and then two days later amount of around 5$ got deposited back to my credit card by Amazon.
I got an email saying that the actual fee charged by Indian customs was that much less so Amazon is returning the extra money I paid. I never had such an experience and after that they became my absolute favorite. I bought a Kindle for my husband, PW for me, and two more PWs for my family.
I also keep ordering from them various other things not available in India and I am still a very satisfied customer